Author Topic: COH & WildStar Closures - An Alternate Viewpoint from the Inside (MMORPG.com)  (Read 3656 times)

Ultimate15

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https://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/news.cfm?read=49799&ismb=1

This is essentially a rumor report about an anonymous poster (?) whom is stating the following...

"...According to the anonymous poster, NCSoft is RUMORED to have shut down Paragon Studios "because they tried to pull a fast one on NCSoft". Ostensibly, NCS handed a large sum of money to Paragon to develop City of Heroes 2, but the money was reportedly used on another project instead, according to exChua. "Paragon Studios basically took the money, pretended to work on CoH2, but in actuality started building a completely unrelated IP, writes exChua in the statement posted at Kotaku."

How do we feel about this? It's hard to give credibility to a complete stranger on the internet. Like, really hard.
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Victoria Victrix

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https://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/news.cfm?read=49799&ismb=1

This is essentially a rumor report about an anonymous poster (?) whom is stating the following...

"...According to the anonymous poster, NCSoft is RUMORED to have shut down Paragon Studios "because they tried to pull a fast one on NCSoft". Ostensibly, NCS handed a large sum of money to Paragon to develop City of Heroes 2, but the money was reportedly used on another project instead, according to exChua. "Paragon Studios basically took the money, pretended to work on CoH2, but in actuality started building a completely unrelated IP, writes exChua in the statement posted at Kotaku."

How do we feel about this? It's hard to give credibility to a complete stranger on the internet. Like, really hard.

Basically, only someone who sucks down QAnon and Alex Jones conspiracies with their daily morning beverage is going to believe an "anonymous" poster.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Codewalker

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Everything I've heard from former rednames who would be in a position to know (some directly, some through intermediaries) is 100% consistent with what pohsyb posted.

COH2 was pitched a couple of times, but it was years before the game closed. NCSoft rejected the proposal both times.

I don't know the exact funding source of the two non-COH projects that Paragon had in development at the time the studio was closed, or what levels of approval they had received from management in Korea. It's possible there might be some small grain of truth if there was a miscommunication and the top level wasn't fully aware of what was being worked on. However I can definitively say they did not divert funds from COH2, because such a project was never green-lit in spite of multiple attempts.

Since the rumor got that much of a fundamental detail wrong, it makes me extremely skeptical about the rest of it.

Ultimate15

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Grateful that Pohsyb came forward and said their peace. When things like this get started, only insiders can really clear up the crock that other supposed 'insiders' are trying to stir up. Also, I noticed that in the Reddit thread where Pohsyb commented, the OP had a link with 'Proof that he is a dev'... but the link makes no mention of him having worked on City of Heroes and/or being affiliated w/ Paragon Studios in any way...

It really does make you wonder: what does this former dev think they have to gain by coming forward with something so fictitious as this? Were they just looking for their 'moment' so they would be on the tip of everyone's tongue for a couple weeks...? Are they trying to keep a job w/ future NCSoft titles by publicly defending them (even when other devs are stepping forward to prove them wrong)?

Regardless, I thought I had smelled a rat. Because really... if it were the Paragon Studio devs whom were mis-allocating funds and not putting certain products into production, then why wouldn't NCSoft come forward with that? That would've put them in a good light, and the 'blame' for the death of the game wouldn't have solely been with them.

So many loop holes  :roll:
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MegaWatt

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more loopholes then a bowl of fruitloops....
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Ron P

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Looks like complete crap from a random person at best ... at worst it is NCSoft spin doctoring trying to recover people's trust and their reputation. Here is why. In the article the "Watergate" informant said ...

"A decade that NCSoft never saw a single return of investment on. So obviously... they had a lot of patience."

There simply is no way in living hell a company is going to dump a ton of money on another company and not get a progress report or something to see in a friggin' decade. That wouldn't be "patience" if they did ... that would be pure insane level stupidity.

Also if they defauded NCSoft there would definitely been a lawsuit going on which would be easy to confirm.

Victoria Victrix

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I wrote about this back during closure, but it's worth repeating here.

In the week after closure was announced, I realized that the store made the perfect place to launder money.

Here is how it would work.  Make 10,000 free accounts.  Each account uses untraceable cash gift cards that can be bought in bulk to buy Paragon Points. 

Then cancel the accounts.

The money is still there.  But there is no record of who the points (which will never be redeemed, obviously) belong to.  There isn't even a record of which game should be getting the credit for the purchase, since (I believe) all the NCSoft "stores" shared the same money-processing service.

Now NCSoft has $X of clean money that will never be redeemed for anything.  They then use this to "purchase" things like goods that will never be delivered, or "construction" that will never be performed, from the source that bought the points with all those canceled accounts.

Viola, that source now has nicely laundered money.

Did this actually happen?  There is no way to tell, but I did point this out to the Korean gaming reporter who interviewed me, and he said this is something that the Korean government knows is going on in the game industry.  Not guesses.  Knows.

It's also a fact that the offices of both Paragon and NCSoft West were packed up and moved to a completely unknown location as soon as it was legally possible for them to do so.

And I'll just leave this here for you all to ponder. 
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Surelle

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I'm not buying that one at all.  As others have said, it doesn't jive with the other COX2-related anecdotes we heard going back a ways.  I'm glad we got an official response.  Why would anyone want to disparage Paragon Studios, anyway?  What a troll.